Practice, Practice, Practice

I have made a vow to myself to make a concentrated effort to master the hollow technique using the puffy mandrel.  These are two attempts, it may not look like it but I see some progress.  Each time I am going to try with clear so I can sort of see what it going on with the air inside the bead.  They are definitely not round.  I added the black glass to try to mask the wonkyness. 

I absolutely love this combination.  This is a 104 COE German glass called multicolor combined with a crystal clear frit in a 96 COE.  The bead has hints of purple, green, and blue.  The bead is very shiny which indicates that there is silver at the surface.  I will definitely use this combination on a lot more beads. 

This bead is from a cobalt wine bottle.  I then added baking soda to the outside of the bead to give it a antique look.  It seems to age the look of the bead.  I may play with this idea more, maybe etch it and see if it adds another layer of depth.

This is a set that I made with a teacher in mind, but instead she liked the small lumpy hollow.  She wants a whole bracelet out of those.  Practice, Practice, Practice.

I also have been concentrating on adding items to my etsy store.  It was empty for awhile, now slowly filling it up.  This is the first time I have finished items for sale in my store.  I do not have any Art Fairs planned for the spring, so I thought I would try selling some pieces online. 

I have also still been tweaking my web site.  So far it has had over 300 page views, pretty cool.  Although I think some are for the wrong reasons, I am getting spam emails that seem to be aimed at hosting my web page.

Until next time, Cheryl.